Main Navigation

Main Content

A non-profit publication of the Office of the University Relations of Virginia Tech,
including The Conductor, a special section of the Spectrum printed 4 times a year

Sorghum harvester moves from Tech to Mississippi

By Stewart MacInnis

Spectrum Volume 20 Issue 17 - January 22, 1998

The sale by Virginia Tech's Department of Biological Systems Engineering of a
one-of-a-kind sorghum harvester to Alcorn State University in Lorman, Miss., is
as sweet as syrup.
In fact, the sorghum harvester built by the department will be used in Alcorn
State's efforts to revive the syrup-making industry in the South. In colonial
days, syrup was made in the region by extracting the juice from sweet sorghum
and sugarcane and boiling it down into syrup.
Several communities in middle Tennessee, middle Kentucky, northern Alabama,
and southwestern Mississippi have continued making table syrup in this
traditional method. But the cottage industry commands just a small market,
largely due to the intensive labor need to harvest sorghum by hand.
The Department of Biological Systems Engineering developed the whole-stalk
sweet sorghum harvester in 1986 in a project at Virginia Tech exploring the use
of sorghum as a source of sugar and fiber for making ethanol, said John
Cundiff, professor in the department.
The exploration of sorghum's potential as a source for ethanol ended in 1991.
Currently, 90 percent of the fuel ethanol in the U.S. is produced from corn
grain.
The pull-type harvester was loaned to a Madison County farmer for two years
before it was refurbished by Virginia Tech and sold to Alcorn State, Cundiff
said.
Power for all the harvester's subsystems is supplied via a universal joint
driveline from the tractor. The harvester cuts a single row of stalks and
accumulates them in a U-shaped frame. When the frame is full, the machine stops
and the frame rotates to dump the bundle of stalks. It can harvest about four
acres of sorghum stalks per day.
William Patten, an agronomy specialist with Alcorn State's Cooperative
Extension program, is coordinating that university's syrup-making program. He
hopes the harvester will help in efforts to revive and expand syrup-making in
the region, one of the strategies being pursued to help farmers diversify their
crops.
Cundiff provided initial training on using to harvester to Patten and others
at a farm in Claiborne County, Miss. Patten plans to conduct a number of
demonstrations of the harvester during the next harvesting season.
Not only did the harvester play an important part in the Virginia Tech ethanol
project, it was also used as projects for several students, including a Ph.D.
research project that analyzed the harvester's hydraulic system.
"This machine has served Virginia Tech and farmers in Virginia well in many
ways," Cundiff said. "I find it gratifying that it can continue its usefulness
by serving farmers in Mississippi as well."